The Clark County School District (CCSD) continues to deal with the aftermath of an Instagram account that pictured black students threatening a Columbine Part II and using racial slurs. The most recent controversy occurred when one of the trustees used the term “colored students” when discussing school safety. She quickly corrected herself and said she meant to say “students of color,” but the damage had been done. Many of the black parents in the room responded with anger, stormed out of the room, and said this is an example of systemic racism. For me, this is a smorgasbord of what’s wrong with the discussion of race in America.
As I described in a related article recently published by OpsLens, this again shows the enshrinement of anger as the most important quality. Angry people elevate, enshrine, and bottle that emotion, then lob those Molotov cocktails of rage at their so-called enemies. So black people get angry at the school board, defenders of common sense get angry at the blacktivists, and they lob back and forth at each other. Meanwhile, the school district hasn’t addressed school safety, parents haven’t proposed any solutions, and nobody has thoughtfully assessed the situation.
Second, the school official immediately tried to apologize by saying that everybody is dealing with their “implicit bias.” Translation from people who aren’t steeped in Victimology 101: “Please excuse my accidental racism.” Implicit bias is explicitly false, so she was quoting something fashionable but wrong to excuse herself. More sadly, she showed how quickly politicians bow to the rage of blacktivism (or any other group) and hope to satisfy the mob by immediately confessing their supposed sins.
The final absurdity of this situation was that a black parent afterwards said this is an example of systematic racism. This is another popular buzzword and concept among liberals and racial advocates, but it’s wrong. It blames perceived inequalities in the black community on a cosmic conspiracy instead of looking for more concrete causes and actions, many of which come directly from the black community such as fatherlessness and lack of education in schools. On top of that, there is no evidence that a trustee using the C from NAACP to describe black students is part of that conspiracy. I’m old enough to remember when the preferred term was black or African American, and enough of a historian to see it change from negro and colored person to persons of color.
There are many buzzwords in the racial debate that, when hurled in anger, often make politicians cower and forfeit thoughtful and meaningful solutions. And there are lots of words like ridiculous and absurd to describe how a simple misstatement from a trustee became an example of a cosmic conspiracy against blacks that inspires counterproductive anger.
